outer-jessie's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Tale of Antje, or, That Time I Was So Embarrassed I Couldn't Breathe I don't know everything there is to know about anything. But more importantly, neither do you. That is all. Thank you for listening. You know what would help me out? If the two personality-endowed co-workers from the next room switched places with the personality-deficient two that work in here with me. I would be a much happier slice of cheese. Can you just imagine? I would probably be ten times more productive, and write overwhelmingly fascinating entries about all our exploits. But nay, I instead shall be writing this mediocre entry about my real-life life. Last night, Rob and I went out for a fancy dinner. It wasn't supposed to be fancy, except I messed up and presented us to a martini bar that I had expected to be a nice place for a meal. Sadly, it was more of a nice place for a martini and a smoke. I'm ok with the martinis, but I expect to be fed when I go out for dinner. So we sheepishly ditched our waitress and shopped around a little and ended up at a cozy Italian place where we got happy-drunk (it really doesn't take much, and yet we never hit the too much point) and had very surprisingly cheesy food. Silly us, with our red wine and cheese sauces! Who knew? You would think that manicotti and ravioli would be a no brainer. Note to self: do not order wine. You don't like it, and the waitresses easily persuade you to get the most expensive glass. Then you feel stupid. There's something about the color maroon that says "cozy dining experience" to me. I think I would have been drunk even if I had ordered Sprite, like I should have done. We were gone for hours and hours, but when we got back, it was only seven. We hit a time pocket, I think. A maroon Italian food time pocket. Now is the moment when I relive the humiliation of the Antje story. Once upon a time, I took a year of German. It was my first year of college, and I had recently embraced the realization that I was bisexual, and it was ok. I was at a women's college, and there was much fodder for my lust. In particular, there was a splendid German language assistant named Antje. She was not, as you may expect, blonde-haired and blue-eyed. On the contrary, she had brown hair and hazel eyes and she was tall and lithe, and she had this intoxicating way of moving her mouth as German speakers do. She was the leader of the small group instruction sessions, where we would go over the lessons, play games using the vocabulary, talk about the books we were reading in class; you know, basic first-year foreign language stuff. She was awesome, she was funny, she was personable, she was older, she was forbidden, she was authority...oh man. She had me by the throat. And when I conjure up an image of that, I find it very accurate. She had me. I used to write her silly little emails in German, just because I liked her. I would run into her on campus (often timed so that I would meet her coming out of the building after class) and she would say, "Hallo, Jessie!" I would go to the language building and pretend I didn't see her walking behind me, thrilled that she may be watching me covertly. When second semester rolled around, I started writing her more and more. When I heard something about Germany in another class, I'd write her; when I started singing German songs in my voice class, I'd write her; when I made up a silly poem with her as the main character...I'd write her. And around then was when she told me to stop, unless I had something to say about class. Ok, so that was mildly embarrassing on its own. I was hoping to be friends with her and get promoted from there, but that wasn't working out. And I was becoming more rash, because the year was drawing to a close and she would be gone when it was over. I wrote her apologizing for writing her :) I wanted to be on her good side again. Now when I said she was forbidden and authority, that is coming from the voice of 20/20 hindsight. I didn't see these things back then. It never occurred to me how highly inappropriate it was for an instructor, even a 24-year-old assistant with a one-year postion, to pursue a relationship with a student. So when I sat one day watching her during the viewing of a movie, hot and bothered and suffering from shortness of breath, I never thought of the repercussions of writing her yet another email telling her how she made me feel. But I figured it out very soon thereafter. My email was brief, being no more than two or three sentences, saying that she drove me crazy and there was nothing I could do about it. I figured, the semester is almost over, she'll be leaving soon, if she doesn't want to deal with this, she can just blow it off. With any luck, she would see it for the invitation that it was, and take me up on it. Oh, good heavens, no, there was nothing like that. I showed up at our session the next day and she asked to speak to me outside the room. I was filled with anticipation. She said that my email and my feelings made her feel very uncomfortable. She had spoken to her advisor, MY GERMAN PROFESSOR, about it, and they had decided that I should not participate in the session that day. I smiled coyly into her eyes. I was sent home. I was mortified! She told my teacher on me! I walked home overwhelmed by the weight of this embarrassment, and gasping "Oh god, oh god." And I could not help running into that professor a few days later, as much as I tried to run away without her noticing. She was the one that enlightened me about the impropriety of the situation, and said she felt Antje had done the right thing in telling her, and that we should put this aside, yadda yadda yadda. Ahhhhhckh. I wrote Antje one last time, telling her I was writing in profound humility, and apologizing. She wrote me back saying she had asked me to stop with the emails, and she was sorry I was humiliated. Humility is not the same as humiliation, but for this situation that really didn't matter. So that was that! I never gave up hope that she would have a go with me once her responsibilities were fulfilled for the year, but of course she never did. I cried when she left. I hugged her tight and let her go. There wasn't much left to do. I remember I wrote her the following winter, after something happened in Germany (I can't even remember what) but she never wrote back. I fancied I loved her, but that's not what it was. Nah. 10:06 a.m. - 2001-11-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||